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The We Company, formally known as "WeWork", has
announced that it has filed confidentially for IPO, following moves by other
mature startups such as Lyft, Pinterest, Zoom and Uber to go public this year.

The coworking firm did not reveal any financial information
in the filing. The company has, however, historically failed to turn a profit and
revealed a net loss of $1.9bn on $1.8bn revenue in 2018, which was double its
net loss of $933m on $886m the previous year. Instead, its business model
relies of heavy funding from private investors so it can buy real estate, often
in expensive markets, while money is made back over time through rent.

Its most notable investor is SoftBank which has so far
invested $10bn in the company. SoftBank's latest $2bn cash injection in January
this year was to
rebrand WeWork as the We Company as it enters its new phase of growth, which
will aim encompass more aspects of people's lives, beyond just providing the
their workspace. It is with this rebranding, which includes other business units
such as flexible residential firm WeLive and and education division WeGrow, the
company intends to go public.

"We have regularly focused on how to take our business
to the next level in every aspect. As part of keeping all options open, we
confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the Securities and
Exchange Commission in December," the We Company's co-founder Adam Neumann
told employees in an internal memo. "After a lot of thought, last week we
decided to file the first amendment to our submission, which is a step towards
allowing us to decide to become a public company."

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